James owns ‘mental edge’ on Raps
TORONTO — LeBron James reduced the Toronto Raptors to playing for pride in a playoff series again.
“One thing you have is pride,” Raptors coach Dwane Casey said. “One thing you have is pride to go into Cleveland and play for pride.”
Two games into their Eastern Conference semifinals series against Cleveland, the Raptors already are playing for pride.
Cleveland heads home with a 2-0 series lead after beating Toronto 128-110 in Game 2 on Thursday behind a brilliant performance from James (43 points, 14 assists and eight rebounds) and a breakout game from Kevin Love (31 points, 11 rebounds).
If that Casey quote about pride sounds familiar, it’s because it is. After Cleveland took a 3-0 series lead against Toronto in last season’s conference semifinals, Casey said, “We’re playing for pride. We’re playing for the sweat equity we’ve put in for 82 games.”
The Raptors shouldn’t be playing for pride. They were the No. 1 seed. They won a franchise-record 59 games.
They were the only team in the NBA to rank in the top five in offensive and defensive efficiency.
The Cavaliers are playing for something bigger, another trip to the NBA Finals, and the Raptors just can’t get by James in a series. Cleveland beat Toronto in the 2016 and 2017 playoffs and has now won eight consecutive playoff games against the Raptors — the final two games of their series in 2016, a sweep last season and the first two games this week.
Reporters keep asking players from both teams if the Cavs are in Toronto’s collective head. Both sides deny it.
“I don’t know,” James said. “You guys can have that narrative on how you guys feel about that mental edge or whatever the case may be. But for me personally, my mental edge is how I prepare myself every night, how I go about the game plan, try to not make mistakes. And if I do make mistakes, making sure I don’t do it again to compound that mistake.”
James demoralized Toronto in the second half with 27 points on 13-for-19 shooting. He toyed with Toronto.
He lived at the rim in the first half, torched Toronto with fadeaway and turnaround jumpers in the second half. Those daggers left tiny pieces of Toronto’s heart all over the Air Canada Centre court.
Casey had no answer for James. Didn’t matter which defender, James scored.
In three playoff series against Toronto since James rejoined the Cavs, he is averaging 30.1 points, 8.6 rebounds and 7.3 assists and shooting 58.4% from the field.
James respects playoff opponents. That’s necessary, and also obvious based on his performances. But he may not believe Toronto is a team that can beat him in a series.
After eliminating Indiana on Sunday, James said, “Indiana played as well as anybody has played us all year.”
Following Game 2 against Toronto, James said, “they’re a pretty good team, really good. They showed throughout the regular season, throughout the whole season. We knew we was going to have our hands full.”
It wasn’t a slight. It just wasn’t the same praise.
The series isn’t over, officially. “You’ve got to win four games to get out of a series and it starts with the next game, so I will be as sharp as I was tonight . ... We’re not satisfied. We came up and played some good basketball up here but we look forward to even more of a challenge come whenever we play,” James said.
It’s not unusual for a team to have a nemesis it can’t beat: the Chicago Bulls against the Heat when James was in Miami; the Utah Jazz against Michael Jordan’s Bulls. It took years for Detroit to figure out how to beat Boston in the 1980s, and even Jordan came up short against the Pistons in the playoffs.
Even James had to learn how to win a championship.
In the 2011 Finals between Miami and Dallas, Casey was the mastermind behind the Mavs’ defence that shut down James. Casey can scheme all he wants, but he can’t shut down James now, and there’s a reason for it.
There is irony in the way James is trouncing the Raptors.
“I wasn’t that good of a player in that series,” James said of the 2011 Finals.
“I wasn’t a complete basketball player. Dwane Casey drew up a game plan against me in that ’11 series in the Finals when I played Dallas to take away things I was very good at and tried to make me do things I wasn’t very good at. So, he’s part of the reason why I am who I am today.”